Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on market design when prices may not be the best way to match buyers and sellers. Mankiw provides a link to one of Roth's papers, "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets."

Jeff Jacoby argues that the Car Allowance Rebate System (Cash for Clunkers) drove up the price of used cars by over ten percent. That's because it required the destruction of cars that were traded. It also did not have an appreciable effect on carbon emissions.